Press and daily Dakotaian. (Yankton, Dakota Territory [S.D.]) 1880-1889, 1887-08-15

lng uen hnOW Lit to BE.
Did you ever see q battery take posi-.
tion?
Ii hasn't the thrill of cavalry charge
nor the grimness OF line of bsyonets
moving slowly and determinediy on;
but there is d peculiar excitement about
it that makes old veterans rise in their
saddles and cheer.
We have been fighting ut the edge
OF the woods. Every cartridge box has
been emptied once or more, and one
fourth OF the brigade has melted away
in dead and wounded and missing. Not
q cheer id ssheard in the whole brigade,
We know that We are being driven foot
by foot; and that when we break once
more the line will go to pieces and the
enemy will pour through the gap.
Here comes help.
DOVE the crowded highway gsllops q
battery, Withdrawn from some other
position to save ours. The field tence
Is scattered while you could count
thirty, and the guns rush for the hill
behind us. Six horses to piece-three
riders to each gun. Over dry ditches
where farmer would not drive wagon,
through clumps Of bushes, over logs q
foot thick, every horse on the gaIlop,
every rider lashing his team and Yelling
The sight behind us making us forget
the foe 10 front. The guns Jump two
feet high as the heavy wheels strike
rock or log, but not q horse slaekens his
pace, nor cannoneer loses his seat, Six
guns, Blk caissons, sixty horses, eighty
men, race for the brow OF the hili as il
he who reached it first would be knight
ed.
moment ago the battery was con
fused mob. We look again, and the
six guns are in position, the detached
horses hurrylng away. The ammunition
chests open, and along our line runs the
command: "4ive them one more vol
ley and tall back to support the guns. }"
We have scarcely obeyed, when BOOM I
boom! opens the battery, and Jets OF ire
Jump down and scorch tho green trees
under which we fought and despaired. !.
The shattered cid brigade has O aohanoe
to breathe for the first time In three
hours as we form O line and lie down.
What grim, cool fellows those cam
noneers are. Every man is o perfect
mechine. Bullets splash duat IN their
faces, but they do not winoe. Bullets
sing over and around; they do not
dodge. 81
There goes one to the earth, shot
through the head as he sponged his gun,
That machinery loses just one beat,
misses just one cog in the wheel, and
then works away again as before.
Every gun is using q short-f fuse shell.
The ground shakes and trembles. the
roar shuts out all sounds from line
three miles long, and the shells go
shrieking into the swamp to cut trees
short of, to NOW great gaps into the
bushes, to hunt out and shatter and
mengle men until their corpses cannot
be recognized as human. You would
think o tor sado was howling through
the forest, followed by billows of fire.
and yet men live through it--aye, press
forward to capture the battery. We can
hear their shouts as they form for the
rush.
Now the sheile are changed for grape
and canister, and guns are fired SO fast
that ell reports blend into one mighty
roar. The shrek of shell is the wick-
edest sound in war but nothing makes
the flesh crawl like the demoniacal sing
ing, purripg, whistling grape-ehot, and
serpent like hiss OF canister. Mems legs
and heads are torn from bodies and
bodies out into. A round shot or shell
takes TWO men out of the rank as ii
crashes through Grape and oaniater
NOV swakh and pile the dead on ton ~
each other.
Through the smoke we see q swarm of
men. Itis not battle line, but mob
of men desperate enough to bathe their
bsyoDets in the flame OF the guns. The
guns leap from the ground almost as
they are depressed on the foe. and
shrleks and screams and shouts blend
lIto one awful ana steady cry. Twenty